Sharon takes center stage

HOLLYWOOD — Nobody is more surprised by Sharon Osbourne's sudden fame than Sharon Osbourne herself. But she's certainly not complaining about it.

"Yes, it surprises me," Osbourne. "And I (expletive) love it. And that's why I am making every second out of it …. If I could bottle this feeling and sell it, I would."

Osbourne's latest adventure is her own daytime talk show, which premieres Monday in national syndication (including KJZZ-Ch. 14, where it will be seen weekdays at 1 p.m.), giving the woman who spent so many years working behind the scenes as Ozzy Osbourne's wife and manager an even higher profile than she achieved with the MTV hit reality show "The Osbournes."

"I've always wanted my own talk show …. It was my fantasy for a long time," said Osbourne.

And it's not that much of a leap from rock star's wife/manager to reality show star to daytime talk-show host, as far as she's concerned.

"First of all, I'm a show-off," Osbourne said. "Secondly, I was born into the industry. I was trained as a dancer and an actress as a kid but never made it. So maybe it's just something inside of me that's just kind of like, well, I made it, but it's just a bit later."

One thing you won't see or, rather, hear her doing is employing the R-rated, barely bleeped language that "The Osbournes" is famous for. But not because any of her TV bosses ordered her to tone it down.

"I'm going out at a time of day where it's not appropriate to do that. And it just wouldn't be a cool thing …. From my own heart, I just can't do that at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. It's just not cool."

One thing you will certainly see is as many celebrities as they can possibly book on the show. And, despite her image as a tough manager and foul-mouth mom, Osbourne isn't looking to be anything but gracious to her guests.

"I don't want to demean anybody. I don't want to humiliate anybody on TV. That's not what I do. I wouldn't want anybody to do it to me so I wouldn't want to do it to anybody. But I think that there's a way of asking a personal question or something that somebody wouldn't usually get asked in a way that's still dignified and in a way that I would hope that person wouldn't mind responding to."

Like asking those questions while she's in bed with the interviewee — which would be one way of relating to them, certainly.

What she'd really like to be is sort of a down-home Barbara Walters. "If America had a royal family, she would be the queen," Osbourne said of Walters. "She is so professional. She's brilliant at what she does. This woman is perfection. She is so well-educated."

Which Osbourne readily admits she is not.